1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of measuring a quantity of heat applied to the end of an exposed fiber portion of an optical fiber, in particular, to a method of measuring a quantity of heat applied to the ends of exposed fiber portions of a ribbon optical fiber.
2. Description of the Related Art
In fusion-splicing of a pair of ribbon optical fibers, the exposed fiber portions of the ribbon optical fibers are simultaneously fusion-spliced. Therefore, it is important to know the quantity of heat applied to the end of each exposed fiber portion of the ribbon optical fibers.
According to a technique for measuring a quantity of heat, a discharge arc for fusion-splicing is picked up by a TV camera, and a quantity of heat is calculated on the basis of luminance distribution of the arc. That is, in this technique, a quantity of heat applied to the end of each exposed fiber portion is measured not directly but indirectly, or in other words, not quantitatively, but qualitatively. Therefore, the quantity of heat applied to the end of the exposed fiber portion cannot be measured accurately.
Furthermore, since measurement of the luminance distribution is provided by analyzing an arc image picked up by a TV camera, a frame memory and a large-capacity image processor for processing one-frame data are required, resulting in a bulky system and time-consuming processing.